October 2020 Appointment Utilization

This BIG Idea is particularly important in today’s pandemic environment, especially if you are limiting patient appointments.  Many practice management systems make it hard to track appointment utilization, or the percentage of available template slots (the denominator) that are actually filled with patient appointments (the numerator).  Tracking utilization can be tricky if you put two 15 minute appointments in a 30 minute slot or one 30 minute appointment in two 15 minute slots.  Tracking gets trickier if you put a 15 minute appointment is two 10 minute slots.  Listen to see how we dealt with this problem.  You will also hear a discussion of how to calculate utilization when the appointment was a no show, when the template calls for double booking appointments, or when the appointment was placed in a slot on the template schedule that was not originally designed for a patient appointment.  Appointment utilization can get complicated quickly, but rewards from even starting an analysis go straight to your practice’s bottom line.